“Were they satisfied with your reply? Didn’t they ask more questions?”
“Not on that subject,” said the friar.
“The conversation no longer turned upon women. They talked about politics, and there my road was still more unobstructed. The medical students and the two officers, who were more liberal than Riego himself, began to praise the beneficial results of the revolution. Then I answered that perhaps I, being a Moor, had a different conception of liberty from theirs. ‘Pardon me, for I am a stranger here, and explain to me how it happens that although you have so much liberty for all the world, here, you will not allow some men, whom we esteem greatly over yonder—a kind of Christian saints, who wear gray tunics and have no shoes on their feet, and are called—are called—’ ‘Friars!’ the officer shouted. ‘Nice scamps they are! If they are among the Moors, let them stay there!’ Without paying any attention to him, I went on: ‘They are greatly respected in Morocco, and they help to inspire us with love for this land, which we regard as our other country. I am amazed that here (according to your history, which I have read because I am fond of reading) they barbarously massacred a number of them in the year 1834 in Madrid, and in 1835 in Vich, Zaragoza, Barcelona, and Valencia, burning their convents. Am I mistaken, or was it so? We don’t do so in Morocco to inoffensive people devoted to praying and fasting.’ They kept as still as the grave. One nudged the other, and I heard him say, ‘See how well-informed he is.’ ‘He has squelched us!’ replied the other. That was what he said, ‘squelched.’”
“Well, what was the final result of your Moorish escapade?”
“Bah! You can fancy how it ended. On our return to Granada, while going through the winding streets, near my hotel, I suddenly turned toward them, and said with great seriousness: ‘Gentlemen, all that about my being a Moor was a joke. I am only a poor Franciscan friar, who, thanks to the liberty which reigns in Spain, has been obliged to disguise himself in order to revisit his native land. I now salute you in my true character.’ I then turned and went off, leaving them more astonished than ever.”
The friar’s adventures, told with spirit and grace, made us wish to learn the outcome of his journey. Father Moreno then went on to tell about his stay at the baths of Lanjarón; his discussion with an impudent, saucy-tongued young gentleman, whom he silenced at the table d’hôte, leaving him as quiet as a mouse; of his trip to Madrid in a second-class car, always playing the part of a Moor, and availing himself of his foreign dress to censure the abuses of the time in Spain. “As those were remarks made by a Moor,” observed the father, “they did not take offense, but were even impressed by my assertions. If they had discovered that I was a friar, they would have sent me off flying. In fact, I felt immensely dissatisfied not to be able to cry out, ‘Friar I am, friar I shall be, and friar I shall die, God willing!’ But as I was not going to Madrid to enjoy myself, but because I had been sent there, I had to champ the bit and play the Moor. So well did I do it, that I never once betrayed myself by making any movement peculiar to a friar. I never searched for my handkerchief in my sleeve, but in the left pocket of my cloak. It even seems to me that my Moorish appearance and my great beard gave those gentlemen a bit of apprehension, so that they didn’t like the idea of getting into a quarrel with Aben Jusuf.”
It was already getting dark when we left the supper-room. Carmen was full of animation, commenting so gayly on the father’s story that a suspicion flashed through my mind regarding the Abencerrage with a friar’s gown. I tried to dismiss it from my thoughts, but, finally, giving form to the fancies which stirred in my brain, I came to the conclusion, “It can’t be with the father that she is in love—but as for my uncle, she isn’t with him either.”
CHAPTER XII.
That conviction took possession of me, and I do not know whether it was pleasant or painful. I know that it caused a kind of revolution in me, renewing the feeling of unconquerable aversion with which my uncle inspired me, and strengthening it by all the lack of affection I thought I perceived in his future wife. At the same time I would ask myself with eager curiosity, “Why does she marry him?”
Three or four days sufficed to convince me that only my mother’s passionate hatred could insinuate that Carmen was not well treated at home. Doña Andrea scarcely had any part there, if it were not as an old family housekeeper, versed in domestic management, and a slave to her work. I believe that the only privilege Doña Andrea enjoyed, in her capacity as retired mistress, was to hold intercourse oftener than was seemly with the wine bottle or the demijohn of brandy. As for the rest, she always used to address Señorita Aldao with great affection, and the latter, in her turn, used to treat the old servant with indulgence and consideration. Doña Andrea never emerged from her own sphere of housekeeper, and did not make her appearance in the parlor, or make any pretensions incompatible with her position. The only person out of her place there was Candidiña. She was neither a young lady fit to associate with the daughter of Don Román Aldao, nor a scullion devoted to her pots and kettles; she was a little of each, and her presence and ambiguous position, admitted to the drawing-room but excluded from the table, were not easily to be explained. Her younger sister, more humble, occupied a very different position, though no reason appeared for the distinction. Anyhow, it was evident that my uncle’s sweetheart did not live like a Cinderella, and that in getting married she was not simply obeying the desire to emancipate herself, to rule over her own household, which so often influences single women to accept the first man who offers himself.